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Lunar Meteorite: Dar al Gani 400

Libya

Dar al Gani 400 in the Libyan desert The meteorite in the desert.
Dar al Gani 400 in the laboratory A sawn slab of the meteorite in the laboratory.  The maximum dimension is ~9 cm.  The rock appears to be a regolith breccia with at least one large melt-breccia clast (left of center).  Sample courtesy of Steve Arnold.  Click on image for enlargement (146 kb).

Two sides of a small slab of Dar al Gani 400. Millimeter ticks on scale.

Two sides of another small slab of Dar al Gani 400. Millimeter ticks on scale.

from The Meteoritical Bulletin, No. 82, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 33, A221-A240 (1998)

Dar al Gani 400

27°22.17'N 16°11.93'E
Libya
Found 1998 March 10

Lunar meteorite (anorthositic breccia)

A 1.425 kg stone was found in Dar al Gani in the Libyan Sahara. Classification and description (J. Zipfel, MPI): the meteorite is partly covered with a brownish fusion crust; fresh surfaces are gray to dark gray; matrix is well consolidated; clasts include subophitic and fine-grained to microporphyritic impact-melt breccias, granulitic fragments, intergranularly recrystallized anorthosites, and mineral fragments; chemical and O isotope composition is characteristic of lunar highland meteorites (Zipfel et al., 1998b); abundances and composition of noble gases do not suggest a pairing with DaG 262 (Scherer et al., 1998b). For further details, see Zipfel et al. (1998b). Type specimen and two polished sections are with the MPI; main mass with finder.

More Information

Meteoritical Bulletin Database

Dar al Gani 400

References

Bogard D.D., Garrison D. H., and Nyquist L. E. (2000) Argon-39–argon-40 ages of lunar highland rocks and meteorites (abstract). In Lunar and Planetary Science XXXI, abstract no. 1138, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Bukovanska M., Dobosi G., Brandstätter F., and Kurat G. (1999) Dar al Gani 400: Petrology and geochemistry of some major lithologies, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 34, A21.

Cahill J. T., Floss C., Anand M., Taylor L. A., Nazarov M. A., and Cohen B. A. (2004) Petrogenesis of lunar highlands meteorites: Dhofar 025, Dhofar 081; Dar al Gani 262, and Dar al Gani 400. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 39, 503–530.

Consolmagno G. J., Russell S. S., and Jeffries T. E. (2004) An in–situ study of REE abundances in three anorthositic impact melt lunar highland meteorites (abstract). Lunar and Planetary Science XXXV, abstract no. 1370, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Joy K. H., Crawford I. A., Russell S. S., Swinyard B., Kellett B., and Grande M. (2006) Lunar regolith breccias MET 01210, PCA 02007 and DAG 400: Their importance in understanding the lunar surface and implications for the scientific analysis of D-CIXS data (abstract). In Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVII, abstract no. 1274, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Korotev R. L. (2005) Lunar geochemistry as told by lunar meteorites. Chemie der Erde 65, 297–346.

Korotev R. L., Jolliff B. L., Zeigler R. A., Gillis J. J., and Haskin L. A. (2003) Feldspathic lunar meteorites and their implications for compositional remote sensing of the lunar surface and the composition of the lunar crust, Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 67, 4895–4923.

Scherer P., Pätsch M., and Schultz L. (1998) Noble-Gas study of the new lunar highland meteorite Dar al Gani 400. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 33, A135-A136.

Schlüter J., Schultz L., Thiedig F., Al-Mahdi B. O., and Abu Aghreb A. E. (2002) The Dar al Gani meteorite field (Libyan Sahara): Geological setting, pairing of meteorites, and recovery density, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 37, 1079-1093.

Semenova A. S., Nazarov M. A., Kononkova N. N., Patchen A., Taylor L. A. (2000) Mineral chemistry of lunar meteorite Dar al Gani 400 (abstract), in Lunar and Planetary Science XXXI, CD-ROM #1252.

Warren P. H., Ulff-Møller F., and Kallemeyn G. W. (2005) “New” lunar meteorites: Impact melt and regolith breccias and large-scale heterogeneities of the upper lunar crust. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 40, 989–1014.

Zipfel J., Spettel B., Palme H., Wolf D., Franchi I., Sexton A. S., Pillinger C. T., and Bischoff A. (1998) Dar al Gani 400: Chemistry and petrology of the largest lunar meteorite. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 33, A171.

Chemical Classification

Overview | Dar al Gani 400

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Prepared by:

Randy L. Korotev

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Washington University in St. Louis

Please don't contact me about the meteorite you think you’ve found until you read this and this.

e-mail: korotev@wustl.edu

Last revised: 10-Jan-2008